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Guide de l'hydroponique
Welcome to Hydroponics. I know what you are thinking, you think that growing plants, harvesting them and throwing them at the Chef so that he can make food isn't hard. You may be right, but in the hands of a competent and sometimes malevolent Botanist this little green spot of the station can quickly become a force to be reckoned with. It is time to show the station the power of plants ! Green Power Despite what many crewmen may think, the Botanist and the Chef are some of the most important jobs on station, since they are in charge with keeping the crew from going hungry. A valid-hunting army marches on their stomach, and neither donk pockets nor the snack machines will keep those stomachs full for very long. Unless you are the Chef and "re-arranged" your workplace, you will be on the growing side of things and you can let the Chef muck around in the Kitchen for the time being. Now, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the seed selection and all the tools you have at your disposal, both those you start with and will discover later, so let's start from the beginning. Let's grow some plants like your grand-grand-grand-grand-grandfather and his father used to do, and then let's see what the 26th century brings to the table. How to live from the soil You will usually start in the main part of Hydroponics, namely where hydroponics tray, water tanks and all your dispensers start. The Kitchen should be in view and you can get started immediately, but for now you should walk into the backroom. There, you'll need to open your personal locker. This is the equipment you'll be expected to carry along with you and use, so let's review it : * The Plant Analyzer. This thing is what differentiates you from medieval peasants, defend it with your life and keep it handy at all times. When applied to a hydroponics tray, you will get all the information you will ever need. This is good for bragging rights, and even better when you finally get around to doing Botany Research * The Plant Bag. This thing is also precious, but not because of how high-tech it is. If you are worth anything and get bountiful harvests, your trays will likely vomit piles of fruits and crops just waiting to be stashed in the Smart Fridge, ground or eaten. Outside of the later, this thing will allow you to easily scoop everything up by applying it to a stack of grown items and easily shove them in the Grinder or the Fridge. Remember to give a spare to the Chef, he'll be grateful. Note that for the time being you cannot easily dump your products on a table, so you'll need a bit of patience to serve people at your desk if you can even bother * The Mini-Hoe. Small, handy, fits in your pocket. This allows you to claw away all those weeds that will usually overtake the trays after long periods without maintenance and turn Botany into a jungle. You will usually always want to remove weeds when growing stuff, but it can't hurt to keep a few trays on the side growing weed for the off-chance that they grow something useful and rare, or just allow you to get more biomass easily * The Mini-Hatchet. Small, handy, fits in your pocket, can split hands and heads very easily. During common operation it is solely used to cut wood trunks into planks and can be used to cut slice-able items into parts (note that there will be a net loss compared to using a decent item like an actual knife or a scalpel). Once you are done cutting planks and breaking watermelons, you will also realize it is a stupidly robust tool and can easily cut through windows and crewmen alike much like the Chef's butcher cleaver. Just don't throw it like all the cool kids out there, it's a bad idea, scalp people you don't like the good old way * The Apron. You will usually start with one. Allows you to keep one of your tools handy, usually your precious Plant Analyzer * The Shovel. Used to dig up grass tiles and sandstone to make more planting spots, and as thus usually completely useless as a tool. Can be used to bash heads in pretty reliably though. * The Bucket. Used to add water to the trays effectively. Fill at the water tanks or the sink. Try not to splash that water everywhere * Plant-B-Gone Spray. This is what you use when you get a plant you don't want and want it gone. Usually used on plants with no yield when you have no mutagen and somatories, or weed. Usually a bad idea to use it on a plant you actually want. Can be used fairly effectively against kudzu at earlier stages, and shouldn't be applied to other crewmen's faces This is, for now, all your starting gear that will actively matter. With that in mind, let's move on to the rest of your equipment * The MegaSeed Servitor. This is where you get the seeds you are going to plant. All seed packs varieties available come in quantities of three, and hacking it allows you to get even more seeds, usually illegal stuff (duh) * The NutriMax. This is where you'll get fertilizers. When nutrients in your trays run low (as in, empty), dump a bottle in here. One bottle is 10 nutrients, one full refill. You can use a syringe if you're not a wasteful fucker too * The Biogenerator. Dump any organic matter you do not need, activate the grinder and get pure biomass. You can then use said biomass to make all sorts of fun things, from meat and milk to belts and wallets. You'll usually want to plant something with the sole purpose of fueling this machine at some point in the shift * The Seed Extractor. Apply any grown item to the machine, and it will readily spit out packs of seeds for you. This is how you are supposed to keep seeds handy. The first thing you should do when you are done growing your starting seed packs or growing a new variety is extracting seeds pack, preferably two to three or them, and stashing them away Note that there are two more weird science-y machines in the back. No-one really knows what they do. If you find out, feel free to update us on it. Tending to your garden Now, let's plant some seeds. What could possibly go wrong ? Not much. However, you'll have to learn how to grow things right. More often than not you'll have mere minutes to feed the ravenous Chef with tons of usable crops before he busts down the window and hacks you into pieces, and only a hour or two to turn mistakes into miracles before everything explodes and you have to leave in a hurry. Surprisingly enough, despite how exposed it is, Hydroponics is relatively insulated from most problems that may befall the station. Just remember that the shuttle will leave with or without you Now, here's how you plant and grow something if you are too much of a mouth-breather to figure out : * Take your seed packs and throw them in a hydroponics tray. If you haven't figured yet, that's where you're going to grow your crops. Not on the floor, not in space, not on the bodies on your deceased crewmen, in the trays * Slap the tray with your plant analyzer. We'll get back to the results in depth later on, but this is a step you'll have to get used to. This is where you know what's good and what isn't and get ready to either rejoice, mutate your plant or bite the bullet * Tend to your other crops, plant more crops and wait. Hopefully not too long, hydroponics trays can grow anything in minutes. If any fancy lights start flashing, interact with the tray directly to know what is wrong and solve it : ** If you have a weed problem (middle, red flashing light), use your Mini-Hoe on the tray and then carry on ** If you have a pest problem (middle, red flashing light), dump some pest spray in here (you'll find it in the back) ** If you have a nutrient problem (right, yellow flashing light), take a Syringe and a bottle of nutrients from the NutriMax. Squirt 5 units into the tray and you're golden ** If your plant looks unhealthy (left, red blinking indicator) and you didn't dump an entire bucket of sulfuric acid into the tray, you are an unlucky sack of shit and your plant has shitty endurance or lifespan. If you really want to keep the plant for whatever possible reasons, beg the Chemist for Cryoxadone and inject some to the plant (good fucking luck getting it in time) ** If you have a water problem (right-most, blue indicator), take your bucket, fill it and dump it into the tray you window-licking asshat * Once you have hopefully managed to not massacre your plant, a green light should flash (left-most). Click on your plant and you'll rip all those good grown goodies and have them ready for use. Depending on the nature of your plant, this will either clear the tray or leave the plant behind to grow a new set of fruit if its lifespan and production time allow it to * You can now use your grown items and then plant new seeds into the tray. Don't forget to extract seeds and give the grown goods to the Chef before he gets uppity * If your plant isn't single harvest, it will yield more fruit and will eventually die. For now, all you need to know is that once it dies it will take a very obvious decayed appearance and you'll simply rip it out of the tray at interaction. Repose in pieces Advanced Hydroponics So, you know how to grow wheat, potatoes, tomatoes and chili ? Perfect, you're better than your average Assistant at least. Now, you could go on and grow every single seed in your dispenser, and in fact there's no reason not to spare from time or boredom, but you're far, far from knowing everything about plants. Most people think Hydroponics is for drooling idiots, but you're going to show them what plants and a bit of practical science can do ! Plant Statistics Now, if you followed this guide this far, or if you are about as curious as your average crewman, you have likely slapped your plant analyzer on a tray at least once and have been left drooling by the massive amount of information on screen. None of it, or at least almost none of it, is fluff. All of it is important, so let's start weeding out this flow of data : * Endurance : This is your plant's health points. This indicates how much shit it can take before it tosses. Plants lose health points when nasty shit is applied to them (plasma, toxins, acids, etc.) or when their current age exceed their lifespan (if they have high endurance, they can cheat death for a long while which can counterbalance shitty lifespan stats). There's no real 'average', but higher is nice and lower means you'll get less out of the plant * Yield : How much you will get out of every harvest, in case you couldn't tell. 4 means you're getting four fruits every time you pick the plant dry. A yield of 0 is an extremely bad thing, and a yield of 1 won't get you very far. If you don't have mutagen or don't know how to mutate yet, bite the bullet. Getting seeds is the priority, especially with rare crops that can only be harvested once. High yields (above 5) will get you all the bitches and are prime candidates to turn into seeds * Lifespan : How long your plant will stay planted before starting to lose health. All living things stand the test of time, and plants are no exception. Plants die as quickly as they grow and you'll want to squeeze the most out of them before they do. Irrelevant for crops that can only be harvested once unless both their lifespan and endurance are garbage, and decent for crops that can be harvested multiple times. Can counterbalance any yield that isn't 0 if you are patient enough * Maturation Time : How much time the plant will take to grow into starting to produce fruits. Naturally, Maturation Time on Lifespan ratio can be important, and lower is always better * Production Time : How much time the plant will take to grow and regrow once picked clean or mature. Lower is always better, and this is relatively irrelevant on single harvest plants unless Maturation Time + Production Time are clearly over the Lifespan and Endurance is trashy. It is time to start making connections ! * Potency : Kind of an oddball, but extremely important on certain crops. In general, this is your "quality" rating and will tell how much nutrients you are getting out of the crop and out of any food processed with it. It will also cause the fruit to contain more unique reagents if any and strengthen any miscellaneous purposes (nettle damage and plank yield being two notable ones) You will also get to know if the plant you're working with is single harvest or not, if it produces fruit (if it doesn't, apply Plant-B-Gone immediately), how nutrient and water intensive it is (ranking from none of very heavy), if it has subspecies mutations and what temperature and light it thrives into (usually 8 lumens and 293.25 K, so room temperature and regular lighting) Now, you'll usually want to maximize all of those, but how do you do so outside of dumb luck when planting seeds ? And what if your precious seed packs yield literal trash ? I'm glad you asked Xenobotany and GMOs Now the real fun begins. You see, growing crops is fun, but growing super crops is where Hydroponic's at ! And we are growing to grow some zany crops together with the use of science and your local Chemist * Odds are Research and Development are either still trying to figure their shit out or are waiting for minerals from the Miners (for our purposes, they'll need Uranium). If they don't, skip ahead a bit, you're in luck ! Otherwise we'll do it the hard way, stay with me * Take the large beaker out of your grinder (if you can't locate it, get a bucket, if you can't locate that, just fucking go) and head towards Chemistry. If someone is at the desk and Medbay isn't busy trying to fix up half of the station as usual, knock at the window, put the large beaker on the table and request Unstable Mutagen. This is what we're working with. If no-one is at the window, either call someone up if you think they're not being busy or wait a bit and grow more shit for the Chef * Bring your container of Unstable Mutagen somewhere inside Hydroponics and put it down somewhere in reach. Vend a Syringe from the NutriMax and fill it with 15 units of Unstable Mutagen * Find the plant you want to fuck with, preferably a plant you have seeds for and don't mind fucking up to oblivion. Slap it with a Plant Analyzer to get an idea of what you're working on. Take note of the stats, especially the ones that are pure garbage. All of those are bound to change eventually * Inject five units and only five units for now. If you have a dropper, don't pass go, don't collect 2000 $ * Wait about five seconds for a funny message (this can take longer than that, but it's the mean time). If this doesn't happen, wait five more seconds, and then just continue if nothing shows up * If you are lucky, five units will cause the plant to quiver and be labelled mutant, which means its statistics changed. If you are even more lucky, it will mutate outright, giving you access to a new plant with some very interesting and brand new properties. If you are a lucky 7, you might mutate it to an entirely new species entirely ! * Plants that have already mutated tend to be more resistant to unstable mutagen, no need to dump an entire beaker unless you really want a species change. If the yield isn't 0, and possibly not 1, you win * Let it grow and harvest. If it's a brand new species, make some seeds and then grow more normally to enjoy the benefit. Otherwise, either there was an improvement and you have some solid seeds to use, or it's garbage and you wasted unstable mutagen, oh well Note that Unstable Mutagen is... well, unstable. That and it'll shit up your plant's endurance reliably. This is why you'll want to bug Research and Development for a Floral Somatoray whenever possible. The Floral Somatoray does the same thing as the Unstable Mutagen, but it works like a gun and does less damage, and it recharges so you don't have to ruin the Chemist's life every five minutes. Get one whenever possible The Floral Somatoray functions just like Unstable Mutagen, stand next to a tray and blast away. You will usually have superb chance at a mutation, so it's really good to unlock some good evolved stuff ! "What the fuck do the machines in the backroom do?" See Guide to Xenobotany. Practical Hydroponics Eating food is so last century. If you are anything like a competent Botanist, you'll want to know all the ways food can be used outside of crewmen's bellies and microwaves ! * In general, all food can be ground into nutrients. That's what makes you not hungry and allows you to slowly regenerate. Usually, you won't get to redeem the nutrients, but in a pinch you can just inject them directly or swallow a pill or bar of nutrients. Certainly not as tasty as fries or a pie, but it works. Make sure not to go overweight though. For all intents and purposes, nutrients also works as compost for plant nutrition * Tower Caps are the only thing MoMMIs and Engineers will need from you. When grown, they produce wood, as in literal wood. Grow a few of them and drop the planks at your desk, everyone will be thankful * You can make a surprising amount of medicine and minerals using a grinder and grown items. Golden Apples give Gold, Glowberries give Radium, Carrots give Imidazoline (eye medicine), Poison Berries give Toxins and Death Berries give Lexorin (violent poison that blocks respiration and causes suffocation, not to be confused in any case with Leporazine, a potent body heat stabilizer) and Liberty Caps give Psicobylin (powerful hallucinogen without the really bad effects of Mindbreaker) * Ambrosia gives a bunch of assorted chemicals. Bother someone (usually the Chef) to separate all the goodness for you. Vulgaris has some basic stuff, and Deus has some really potent medicine (and Psicobylin) * Nettles can be used to shred people (Death Nettles with very high potency will put energy swords to shame) and can be ground to get cheap access to Sulphuric Acid or Polynitric Acid (Regular and Death Nettles respectively) * Bananas give banana essence. The Clown will love you forever if you give his Clown Cart a good topping (usually done by applying the items directly, don't grind them even though it seems to be the logical thing to do) * Tomatoes can be ground into Tomato Sauce and Chili can be ground into Capsaicin (Hot Sauce). The former can be used to make the Janitor cry a lot and the later can be used to give unsuspecting crewmen the ulcers of their life (and keep them warm if it really boils down to this). If you manage to get those, Ice Chillies can make Cold Sauce (no seriously, and it works just like you can imagine, good for plasma fires) and Blood Tomatoes will cause extra tears from the Janitor * Quite a few crops can be juiced to make drinks and alcohols (take it as fermentation), notably lemons, oranges, watermelons, carrots, tomatoes, grapes, potatoes, wheat and limes. The Bartender will be thankful * Potatoes make the Chef really happy. Applied to their Food Processor, it makes fries. Greasy, nutritious and ready for serving straight out of the processor * Sugar Beets are processed into Sugar (who would have thought), Cocoa Pods can be made into chocolate bars for the exploring Chef and Wheat can be ground into Flour. The later is extremely important, not growing Wheat when a Chef is active is asking to be hacked into pieces, gibbed and used to make steaks with ! * Eggs are made with Wheat and a chicken, one of which starts off in Hydroponics (feed wheat to chicken, wait. Don't wait too much if you don't want chickens to flood your workplace). Cows are ordered via the Cargo Bay and make Milk when a bucket is used on their udder and Soy Milk can be made from grinding soy. Now the Chef will never run out of anything ever ! * If the entire station are being selfish cunts and refuse to give monkeys, bodies or cows to the Chef, be the hero the Kitchen needs and crank some Meat and Milk out of your Biogenerator. Pretty costly, but hopefully it's not hard to get some biomass going when you focus some of your production on the machine * Replica Pods (Diona Spheres) grow into Dionae, sentient slug-like creatures that usually greytide but effectively allows you to bring souls back from permanent death. Once they finish stinging everyone to sample their DNA, they'll grow into literal tree people. Slow and usually less greytide-y. Make good use of your starting seeds, since you'll likely only get three shots at it Meet the Plants Now, you're looking at all those plants, and you are most likely wondering what you can do with those. Immediately, almost all of those have either a direct use or can be refined into food by the Chef, and for the few that don't have direct uses, you can most likely grind them in the Biogenerator to get some sweet stuff going. This is what you're going to be planting or mutating, so pay attention :